The Sweetest Star: Under the Stars Book 2

by Raleigh Ruebins

  And so I sprung out of bed, bounding over to my bathroom. “Gonna take a quick shower,” I said, not even looking behind me at Dash, who was still naked and lying on my bed.

  I got in and rinsed off, keeping the water almost cold. My skin felt searing hot, from my face down to my feet.

  Eight

  Dash

  I'd been waiting for it.

  I knew Eric was going to get up and leave—I’d probably known it since before we'd even started. It confirmed everything I needed to know—that this was just a quick thing, and that once he'd gotten what he needed from me, he'd slip away.

  It was what I’d wanted, and what I’d expected out of the deal. But it still didn’t make it hurt any less.

  Jesus, maybe I’d gotten in over my head, and gone too far too soon. He had stood up to shower without even turning to me once, without a kiss, a look, or even a “thanks.” I mean, I didn’t need an hour of cuddling, but there could have been something more.

  As I heard the sound of him turning on the shower, I cleaned my stomach off with tissues, and then quickly put my clothes back on. I scanned around his room, but there was nothing much to see in there—just a nicely decorated room, clean and bright without clutter. There was a paperback book on the nightstand, and I hated that it made me smile to see it was Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.

  But the brief wave of affection quickly disappeared. Because I didn’t want to like Eric, not in that moment. I had to stay detached, and forget about the fact that he’d just fucked me like I hadn’t been fucked in years, and couldn’t face me afterward.

  I didn’t even look him in the eye when I came. It was habit at this point. In my 10 years with Caleb, he hadn’t usually wanted to look at me during sex—sure, he’d look at my body, but he always used to say that it was “weird” to look in my eyes when we were fucking. So when Eric had been so intent on it, it had thrown me. It was startlingly intimate. And I was supposed to be here just to get a quick, hard fuck.

  But Eric had been so damn passionate, which I could never in a million years have expected. I looked down at my arm, the one that I’d thrown over my eyes when I came, and saw that there was still the faint mark of his hand there, fading more every minute.

  How could things have been so intense in bed and then so distant right after? It felt like a candle that had burned bright and then was suddenly snuffed out.

  The sound of the shower stopped and I left his room, walking back out to the living room where we’d been playing video games. The game was still on the TV, my character standing in the middle of the screen and bobbing his head, waiting for action. I put on my shoes and sat on the couch, trying to arrange my face so that I’d seem calm, neutral, unaffected.

  Finally, Eric padded out into the room.

  “Hey,” he said, circling around to the other side of the couch and sitting on the edge. I looked up and saw that he’d put on a clean, tight white t-shirt and blue jeans. It was painfully unfair how good he looked, like a poster boy with his hair still in a spiky post-shower mess. If I buried my face in it, he would undoubtedly smell fresh and perfect.

  “Hey,” I said back, totally unsure of what to do. Did people talk to their hookups afterward? I wasn’t used to this—the only times I’d had casual sex recently were quick, messy alcohol-soaked romps, and I’d slipped out in the night, never having to talk to them again.

  But right now it still wasn’t even dark out. And we were sober, in Eric’s home, and he was essentially my coworker.

  Finally, he spoke. “So, uh… I have an event to go to, tonight, but if you want to grab some food right now, I’ve still got a little more time,” he said.

  I raised an eyebrow, looking at him.

  “Oh,” I said, “No, I’m not really hungry, but thanks. And what event?”

  “Um,” he said, scratching the back of his neck. “Well, it’s more of a… party. A big party. I told them I’d bring this tequila I got when I was in Cancun, so I’ve gotta go.”

  I nodded, looking down at the floor. “Sounds important.”

  “Are you, uh, up for some more video games?” he said, and I finally met his eyes.

  And took a deep breath. Because I had to say something.

  “…Are you always this goddamn awkward after you fuck someone?” I blurted out, then felt my face get a little hot.

  Thankfully, the corner of his mouth hitched up into a small smile, and he looked down at the floor.

  “God, you can tell?” he said. “I’m… I’m sorry. No, I’m not always this awkward. I just—it—it kind of took a lot out of me, and… if I didn’t go shower right away I would have fallen asleep. Don’t worry about it, Dash. I had fun.”

  I had no clue how to respond to that.

  “You’re welcome to take a shower, if you need,” he said, meeting my eyes again. I noticed that he was gripping one hand against his thigh so hard his knuckles were almost white.

  “I’ll take one when I get home. I wouldn’t mind a glass of water though, to be honest. And then I’m just gonna head out.”

  “Of course—no problem,” he said, standing up so quickly that his leg crashed into the table by the side of the couch. “Shit,” he muttered, grabbing his leg and wincing in pain.

  “You alright?” I asked.

  “Yeah—yeah, it’s fine,” he said, darting a quick look at me, then slowly walking over to the kitchen.

  I took a deep breath and exhaled, completely overwhelmed by how ridiculously awkward this was, compared to how smooth the earlier part of the day had gone.

  Guess I wasn’t made to have casual hookups.

  While Eric rummaged around in the kitchen, I did a quick check of the time on my phone.

  …And promptly realized that I had four thousand notifications on my screen. I looked at it, squinting and blinking.

  “How the fuck…?” I said, in disbelief. I scrolled through and realized that no—it wasn’t a mistake, there were actually four thousand notifications in the past hour since I’d last checked my phone. 4,326, to be exact. Usually I was excited if I had one.

  “What’s up?” Eric said, handing me a huge glass of water.

  “I… uh… somehow have four thousand people liking some photo of me on Instagram?” I said, opening the app and seeing what photo I was tagged in.

  “Oh, shit,” I said, “It’s actually like 5 photos. It’s those women who we met at the farmers market—they posted a picture with you and me in it. How the hell did they even find my username?”

  “What’s your username?” Eric asked.

  “Just my full name.”

  He nodded, smiling at me. “Then that’s how. Your name is on those press releases Eat Network put out about our show. I know we don’t have as much promotion as the bigger shows on the network, but its still out there, especially to anyone that googles my name.”

  I took a deep breath, looking at the photos. “Wow,” I said, “so this is how it feels to be a public figure?”

  Eric puffed out a laugh. “You should probably turn off notifications from your social media apps. When the shows start airing, you’ll get way too many. It’s just how it goes.”

  I scrolled down and looked at the caption of the photo.

  “Oh my God,” I said, cringing a little. “Listen to what she wrote as the caption: Met Eric Ronson today!!! And his new boyfriend who will be on the show with him—Eric & Dash! So cool!”

  I looked up at Eric, expecting him to share in my panic. But he just languidly smiled back, taking a big sip of his own water. He looked positively tranquil.

  “That is fucking fantastic, Dash,” Eric said. “Here’s to a great TV show, huh?”

  I looked at him like he was crazy. “What are you talking about?” I said, “She… she said we were boyfriends.” I expected Eric to be wildly uncomfortable with that—for fuck’s sake, he’d just ran out of the room after we had sex.

  But he just shrugged, still smiling. “It’s fine if she thinks that,” he sai
d.

  “What? …Really? You’re not like, tarnishing your ‘player’ party animal reputation with that?”

  He laughed a little. “Party animal? Whatever. My ‘image’ is not in my control, really. And you know, it’ll only be better for our TV show if people think we are dating.”

  I paused, putting down my phone. “What?”

  “Trust me,” he said, nodding emphatically. “It’ll be good for us. I mean, half the reason the network was so hyped about the show to begin with was that Abe and I were dating. They wanted to play up the fact that we were boyfriends.”

  I narrowed my eyes, trying to figure out what exactly he was getting at.

  “Dash—it’s not a big deal,” he continued, “This is great. People will think we’re boyfriends, they’ll go nuts for it, and they’ll tune in to our show. That’s the important part. We’re gonna be successful.”

  “But… we’re not boyfriends. Not at all,” I said.

  “So?”

  I felt my chest constricting, and I pressed my hands to my temples, massaging them. A chill ran through me, right down my spine.

  “Wait a second. Eric… you… you love this, don’t you? Did you want this to happen?”

  He was still completely nonchalant. “I mean, I didn’t specifically want it. But I didn’t not want it, either. It’s a win-win situation.”

  I almost felt like I was about to be sick.

  “So when you saw those women earlier… and you purposely dragged me into the photo, after they saw me kissing you?”

  He laughed. “Oh, I don’t know Dash, is it really that big of a deal?”

  I stood up quickly—too quickly—and felt like blood was rushing away from my head.

  “This is—this is all because you want publicity, isn’t it? The reason you wanted me to go to the farmers market so bad, for no reason?” I said, hearing the anger in my own voice. “Wow. You want a fake fucking boyfriend.”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Eric said, standing up and holding out his hands. “Dash—that’s not—”

  “Whatever,” I said, heading to the front door and opening it. “You got what you wanted, Eric. You fucked me and convinced all of Instagram that we are actually dating. Congratulations.”

  “Hold on. You wanted to have sex with me. It was almost completely your idea.”

  I turned back to face him, one hand still on the door. “Yeah, it was my idea. And I’m realizing now that it was a really fucking bad one.”

  “Dash, if you want to, we can get the network to tell the woman to take it down, but really, that’s an uphill battle and its one we’ll never win. People are going to say things about us, and you’re going to have to get used to it.”

  “Yeah. Okay. I’ll get used to people calling us boyfriends while in reality, you can’t even look at my face after you fuck me.”

  “Hey,” he said, his voice low and stern, as if I’d just gone too far. But I wasn’t going to back down.

  “You know it’s true.”

  “Well,” he said, “you couldn’t look at my face while I was inside you, could you? What was that? Did you have to pretend I was someone else so you could get off?”

  “No,” I said, my voice steady and unwavering. “I just… I knew it meant nothing to you.”

  “Are you saying it meant something for you, Dash?”

  “Not in the slightest.”

  He paused, looking at me, his face utterly dejected. It sent a pang of sympathy through me, and I was so close to walking back over to him, apologizing, and kissing the frown off of his face.

  But I knew that wasn’t what either of us wanted. He didn’t say anything, and it was too little too late.

  “I’m gonna get out of your way now, Eric. I’ll, uh… I’ll see you at work, and I won’t make things weird. Have fun at the party tonight.”

  I slammed the door behind me.

  He opened it after me, calling my name, but I kept a quick pace down his front pathway and bounded down the downward sloping street toward the ocean. I had no idea if he was walking after me but I just kept moving forward, further and further down the hill, away from him.

  When I finally got to the bottom of the hill where the street met the beach and the oceanside cliffs, I looked back up just in time to see Eric walk back in through his front door. I kept going down the street that lined the water, wishing I could appreciate it for its natural beauty. Instead all I could think about was the crushing realization of how dumb I had been, like a vice slowly tightening over me.

  I mean, I kind of knew it was coming—I knew Eric wasn’t relationship material, and that’s not what I wanted, anyway—but it didn’t make it any easier to deal with. Especially not after I had delusionally thought that I might have been special. He’d told me I was beautiful while he was inside me. He probably said it to everyone he fucked. Why had I thought it was genuine for me?

  I had known what I was getting into, but I hadn’t had a clue how it would make me feel.

  When I finally made it back to my house just over 20 minutes later, I saw that I had another 573 new notifications on my phone—all about the photo—and one lone text message. It was from Eric. We’d exchanged phone numbers when I signed up for the show, but hadn’t texted each other before.

  >>ERIC: Dash. I had an amazing time with you today, and that’s the truth. If you want nothing to do with me, that’s none of my business, but I wasn’t just hanging out with you for publicity. Please know that.

  I felt a kick of guilt for having been so mean to him back at his house, but what was done was done. I should have known better.

  Maybe it would never work for me.

  The phone clattered as I chucked it down onto my desk. I went to the bathroom and turned the shower on hot, stripping off my clothes. My t-shirt still smelled like his house, a vaguely clean and pleasant smell that now just made me sad. I ended up back in my room, face up on my bed and staring at the ceiling.

  I knew it had been a bad idea, and I still did it, because I couldn’t keep away from him. Part of me still wanted him, but I shoved the feelings down, deeper and deeper, until all I could feel was numb.

  I had a little over a week before I had to film the first live show with Eric, and I wasn’t going to let my feelings get in the way of it.

  Fuck. Shit. Fuck.

  I’d planned on getting to the taping of our first show late, but I was too late, scrambling out of my car one minute before I was supposed to be in the makeup chair backstage.

  I broke into a jog toward the building, and when I finally got inside and to the makeup chair, Eric was already sitting in his, getting powder applied to his face. I sat in the other empty chair, slumping down and taking a huge breath.

  “Dash,” Amelia, the woman who was applying Eric’s makeup, said. “Jesus Christ, I thought you weren’t gonna show up. And how am I supposed to powder you? You’re all sweaty.”

  I was still struggling to catch my breath. “I’m here,” I said, “I’m here.”

  I didn’t make eye contact with Eric. I’d of course had to see him a couple times earlier in the week, when we’d met with producers to discuss the upcoming first live show, but I’d deftly avoided speaking with Eric at all of the meetings. There had always been someone there as a buffer—either Andrea, other producers, or crew members.

  Today on the show, we’d be making shrimp linguine with lemon and garlic, with a side of pan-roasted vegetables. Nothing crazy. At least we weren’t making something complex like beef bourguignon or French macaron cookies for our first show.

  I probably should have practiced cooking the meal with Eric off-air. But I sure as hell wasn’t going to do that. I had practiced alone, and I assumed he’d done the same.

  His eyes had carried dark circles under them all week. He was also uncharacteristically quieter than usual, and didn’t try to talk to me after the meetings like I thought he might. Maybe he was avoiding me, or maybe he knew I was avoiding him. Part of me wished he would try to talk to me, ju
st so I could know whether or not he was thinking about me at all.

  As I caught my breath, sitting in the makeup chair, I stole a glance in his direction. The bright light of the makeup mirror illuminated him completely, and he looked slightly less exhausted as as Amelia put powder on his face. He looked good, though it pained me to acknowledge it—every bit the star, someone you’d expect to see on TV. I glanced back at myself in my own mirror, and all I could see was a nervous wreck.

  When we went out onto the set, it would be the first time Eric and I had spoken without someone else there all week. Well, no one except for the entire audience that would be watching us, of course—both in the room and live on TV and online.

  The next thing I knew, Eric and I were standing at the side of the set waiting for our cue to go on. It happened so fast, and I could hear the sound of the audience warming up, laughing and talking in their seats.

  And it hit me hard, sending a sharp chill through me: I was about to go on live TV. And not just as a guest on something—as a host, of my own show, my show with Eric. I probably should have been nervous all week, building up to our first show, but mostly I had been dwelling on Eric. Now, standing by the side of the stage, the realization of what I was about to do came into sharp focus.

  It was absolutely fucking wild.

  And in that moment, something amazing happened.

  Everything else melted away.

  All of the awkward feelings toward Eric, all of the avoidance and disappointment I’d been so steeped in for the past week. It was staggering how instantaneously everything came into focus.

  There was no time for bullshit. Eric and I were co-hosts, and that would be the priority.

  So I turned to Eric, and I smiled wide.

  “You ready?” I asked.

  His eyes widened, like he was shocked I was talking to him.

  “Yeah,” he said, a small smile forming on his lips. “I’m ready.”

  And finally, it felt right to talk to him. Because no one else in the world could understand what we were feeling, right at that moment. So what if we had been awkward after we had sex? Maybe I could let that go.